'We need a party that will go ALL the way

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"BUILD the revolutionary party" is the catch-cry that the Socialist Workers' Party presents as its answer to the Left in the labour movemant.

Concluding the Rally last Saturday, Alan Thornett of the Workers' Socialist League outlined a different version: a party fighting for teadership within the working class itself", weaving to. gether campaigns and areas of work rather than counterposing itself to them.

We publish his speach as an important contribution to the debate on the Left, and invite discussion.

Marxists have a basic starting point to all of their struggles and ideas - that the working class is a revolutionary class, and as such is capable of overthrowing the capitalist system and establishing the socialist order.

It is a fundamental truth from which we draw the strength to face the daily struggle. It allows us to see our victories and defeats within the class struggle within the context of an entirely achievable strategic objective.

It is an outlook which gives Marxists something unique amongst all political tendencies in the workers' movement - an unshakeable confidence in the working class as a revolutionary It is something we have to defend every day against those who tell us that the working class are so imbued with the ideas of capitalism that they can always be diverted at the crucial point. They are usually the same people who say the working class won't fight in order to cover up their own refusal to lead. :

We have to explain that our confidence springs not from romanticism but from Marxism as a scientific theory. That we see the working class as an exploited class, driven by the realities of class society into conflict with their exploiters - not just at the point of production but at the level of government.

This does not mean that workers are consciously seeking revolution it means that the working class are objectively rerolutionaryIt means that at moments of history when all the conditions are present, the overwhelming power of the working class. as the producers of all wealth. can be harnessed to make a revolution.

October 1917 changed the work because it showed it coul be done.

But, as everyone knows, that revolution took place when all the conditions for the seizure of power were present. Not just the disintegration of capitalism. Not just a rise in the consciousness of the working class.

But also the leadership in the form of Lenin's Bolshevik Party - the most developed leadership the working class has ever produced.

It. points to our task today. To produce a leadership on Bolshevik lines. A party built in that tradition Alan Thornett: Not a party but a party built and establis which can lead a successtul socialist revolution when the revolutionary moment comes.

But that as everyone knows is easy to say but very difficult to accomplish in practice.

The revolution of 1917 has undergone a deep bureaucratic degeneration. To build a revolutionary party today means building a Trotskyist party which addresses itself not only to leading the social revolution in the capitalist countries but also the political revolution in the deformed and degenerated workers' states - something which the events in Poland today have shown to be entirely possible.

It means building parties which are not nationally based parties, but parties built as part of a revolutionary international, with a perspective of world revolution.

It means building parties of a particular type. Not parties which remain isolated from the working class, or at best exist on its periphery, but parties established and developed within the working class itself - rejecting a sectarian approach to the mass movement as Lenin did in 'Left Wing Communism'.

It means building parties based on a programme which is no: only adequate to the needs of the working elass today but raises the consciousness of the workers and takes them in the direction of power.

It was our joint conviction on this approach which made the fusion between the old WSL and the ICL possible.

Both movements were convinced that in Britain any serious development towards a revolutonary party would have to be built with a fight inside the unions and would have to have a correct attitude towards the outside the working class, or at hed within the working class' This is something which has not been achieved in any adequațe way by any previous Trotskyist grouping in Britain.

The fusion therefore creates a unique opportunity in Britain - to build a party which has an open and non-sectarian approach to the working class but at the same time fights on firm programme and principles.

It is also self-evident that unique conditions exist in the present period for such a development.

You don't need me this afternoon to tell you about the Thatcher government; monetarism; the 4% wage norm; de-industrialisation of the economy; three million unemployed; the destruction of the social services; legislation against the unions and plunging living standards.

We have Reaganism in the USA and the drive towards the Third Worki War, with the biggest rearmament in history, talk of tactical nuclear wars and ail to every dictatorship in the world.

We have economic crisis gripping the entire capitalist workd. Falling living standards in the major capitalist countries and grinding poverty in the underdevel oped countries.

But even these unique conditions do not of themselves resolve the problem of how the working class can fight back. The question of leadership comes up at every stage.

A number of conditions have to be present. It is necessary to grasp very clearly the intimate connection between the programme and demands you advance in today's struggles and the strategic goal of social revolution.

That means a very clear grasp not only of the demands of the transitional programme but more importantly how they are used in practice in the day to day struggles of the working class.

It means for example having a very clear understanding of the power and relevance of a transitional demand like open the books.

Take the state owned industries, since we are heading for a BL strike.

Workers are confronted with a picture of bankrupt industries unable to meet even a fraction of the claims made by the trade unions But what is the reality?

1he Observer commis sioned a very interesting study of the financing of the state I industries - which is worth referring to.

The overall assessment made by the team was that the state industries are "a money lender's paradise"

The returns from the 23 industries they covered ranged from a total joint profit of £800 milion - 1o a joint loss of £l% billon. depending on hou the figures were calculated.

But even if we take the highest loss fure we then find that the same 23 indus tries part t3 billion to the banks in interest over the same period.

And that is without opening the books. The £ 100 million interest charges BL pay to the banks for example, would more than meet the current claim which management calculate as £80 million.

The open the books demand means that workers reject the management's figures and propaganda and take an important step in the direction of workers' control.

The working class emerge to confront the class enemy - as the steelworkers did last year - only to be split and divided and contained by their own so-called leaders.

Workers оссиру to defend their jobs like St Benedicts, Longearth, and Mary's, Jeans Laurence Scott, immediate enicE into struggle with the officials who want to call the action off ar leave them isolated and open to being smashed by the state.

The TUC has disappeared from sight since the Tories were elected. The TUC conference refused to lift a finger against Thatcher. They have talks with Thatcher and come out saying "there is light at the end of the tunnel."

In local government, left Labour councils - even the best of them - refuse to act as working class leaders and confront the government. Instead they rely on a policy of rate increases.

The deepening economic crisis makes the reformists even more reluctant to fight. Their politics paralyse them when they are faced with the viablity problems of the capitalist system or of the individual employer.

So what effect has this had on the working class? It has caused anger and frustration and it has allowed the Tories to rampage almost with impunity - the only major defence of jobs was the stopping of pit closures by the threat of a miners' strike.

But it has also created explosive pressures inside the working class which are reaching breaking point. The most advanced example of this is BL where militancy has reached unprecedented terels and workers are simply spoiling to get outside the gate.

The youth riots were a reflection of the same pressures and produced a gut reaction to the degradation imposed on them by capitalism.

But again whilst these developments create favourable conditions, they do not resolve the question of revolutionary leadership.

Because the hard fact is that the problem of working class leadership cannot be resolved without the development of a Trotskyist party, extensively rooted in the working class.

So what kind of party do we need and how do we achieve it?

Firstly we have tried to present at the Rally today some of the areas of work the WSL is involved in:

Work in the unions; in rank and file groupings; support for the anti-imperialist struggle in Ireland; the struggle in Poland; our work on women's oppression; solidarity work with the oppressed; work amongst youth; gay rights; work amongst the unemployed.

We have tried to show that these major and very diverse areas of work are brought together by the unifying factor of the party. All these areas of work are woven into the party's strategic objective the mobilisation of the working class for the seizure of power.

But they have to be woven into a party of a particular type - a vanguard party the party Lenin fought for.

But even that presents a problem, calling themselves because every Trotskyists would regard themselves as a vanguard -but clearly most of them are not. So what is a vanguard First of all it is not a matter of being out in front of the working class. Many groups are out in front of the working class - some so far that the working class would need a radio telescope to make contact with them - and we could all put names to those.

To be a vanguard party it is a matter of being in the leadership of the working class and that is something quite different.

But developing a party that can actually lead workers is a difficult question. It means establishing a record. It means winning the confidence of sections of workers on the leadership you give and the programme you advance.

Such demands, like cost of living clauses, or occupations. if carefully presented and correctly fought for can both challenge capitalism and the existing consciousness of the working class.

That kind of struggle, alongside a struggle at every level in the unions, particulariy on trade union demo cracy which has now been opened right up by the struggle inside the Labour Party, could soon establish Trotskyists in positions of leadership.

We want to build a party with its roots in the working class and its sights set on social revolution.

To do this it has to be disciplined party, not authoritarian. But a party in which maximum discussion takes place on policy and programme and is then capable of the disciplined implementation of that pro gramme.

Workers in struggle are not looking for a discussion shop - they are looking for a serious leadership organisation. question of goverment and We have to take the struggle inside the Labour Party very seriously.

If Thatcher is removed in the course of the wages struggle this winter or even it she is removed at the next election and Labour government elected, What kind of Labour government is it going to be?

That is the issue which lies behind Tony Benn's challenge for the deputy leadership and all the recent struggles on democracy.

Will the policies decided by the Labour Party conference be the ones contained in the party manifesto and carried out by a Labour government or will the right wing leadership go their own way as they have in the past.

Rocked

We have supported the democratic reforms and the Benn campaign all the way and will continue to do so. The democracy movement that he has come to represent has rocked the labour movement to its foundations, not just the Labour Party, but the trade unions as well.

means can now fight for the kind of policies want see a future Labour government adopt.

But Tony Benn is not a Marxist. We strongly disagree with the programme advocates future Labour government.

everyone knows he stands on the alternative economic strategy which does not challenge capitalism contains reactionary nationalistic demands like import controls. Tony Benn makes the nationalistic call for a national liberation struggle in Britain.

Whilst supporting Tony Benn as the best of the lefts and recognising his contribution on democracy, we fight relentlessly against such positions. They are not just inadequate, they are wrong. They lead right back into the capitalist blind alley of refonnIsm.

Goal

We have to fight not for a Labour government of the oki type - or a left Labour government to implement the Alternative Economic Strategy - but for a workers government - a government committed to the working class, responsive to the labour movement and controlled by it.

To the left in the Labour Party we say the same as we say to the left in the unions - we will fight with you when you fight. We are with you all the way on democracy. We will fight with you if you will stand fascism. with us we will stand with you in solidarity with all workers in struggle.

But there is a difference tween us - and we make about it. We are aries go just a part of the way or even half of the way - we are going all of the way and we are going to build the party to do it.

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 15 October 1981 Page 12 Unite the Iranian eft in struggle! Writeback, 1 WOULD like to comment on two letters in Socialist _e-ters Writeback to Socialist Organiser 28 Middle Lane London N8 a huge gulf between cerning religion. combatting his politics.

But to say that the WITH reference to the letter of some Iranian student supporters of the Unity of Communist Militants in Socialist Organiser 54, dated 24 September, thère are some points which we would like to raise.

We believe that it is the duty of all socialists to fight against what we call 'vulgar and bourgeois Marxism' , and that is why we also condemn the WRP for their position on Iran, Iraq, Libya, etc and also their activities and policies in British politics.

Even though the Iranian comrades in their letter have pointed to some facts exposing the true nature of the Tudeh Party, Fedayeen (Majority), CP, WRP, IMG and RCG about their taking sides with either bourgeoisie or petty-bourgeoisie, and have emphasised the need for independent organisation of the working class, they have also made some critical mistakes.

Firstly, the analysis has equated armed struggle with terrorism, and then contrasted it to popular resistance or mass uprising. This is wrong. Armed struggle is only part of the resistance movement and its aim is to break the atmosphere of terror and repression organised by the government.

So it is not the main only tactic adopted by the revolutionary organisations, and everybody, even the bourgeois Bani-Sadr, knows that it cannot replace the popular uprising. (Read his letter to Khomeini).

Secondly, a mass uprising does not necessarily mean a progressive movement. It is the nature of the movement that we should be concerned with. So it is mere populism to quote: "But the point is that the Mojahedeen do not want a mass uprising...

Thirdly, on what grounds do you assume that they do not want a mass uprising?

They do want it, but under their own leadership, and this is where the communists should put their own proletarian alternative to that of the Mojahedeen.

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SOCIALIST LEAGUE WORKERS LEAGUE